Snoop Claims Biggie Tried To Have Him Shot & Explains How They Made Peace (Video)

While Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls had the most storied and ultimately tragic Rap beef in history, there were other moments that greatly defined a coastal conflict between the Death Row and Bad Boy labels. In 1995, there was a shooting in Red Hook, Brooklyn while Tha Dogg Pound and Snoop Dogg filmed the “New York, New York” video. The moment was addressed on BET’s Death Row Chronicles earlier this year. Snoop Dogg, who is in the video and was present during the shooting, says he has never spoken about it. He opens up now.

Appearing on The Rap RadarPodcast, Snoop Dogg spoke candidly about what went down in 1995, and a subsequent peace meeting. At 46:30, Brian “B.Dot” Miller asks Snoop about speculation surrounding Suge Knight’s involvement “in certain activities or certain situations that may have went down in Hip-Hop.” Snoop responds, “I don’t know, ’cause I wasn’t with [Suge Knight and his entourage] like that. That gangsta sh*t, they did on their own. If you watch any of these shows, whether it’s [USA’s] Unsolved, Snoop Dogg was never in the equation. I watched that Unsolved sh*t; I watched every f*ckin’ episode. Only one event they had with me in there: getting shot at in New York. I don’t know how the f*ck they found out about that, ’cause we ain’t never said nothin’ ’bout that. Never! And they showed it the correct way, with Biggie [Smalls] callin’ the shot, gettin’ us shot at,” explains Snoop.

As an artist on Death Row between 1992 and 1997, Snoop continues, “We went up to the radio station to get at [Funkmaster] Flex so we could let everybody in New York know that ‘we brought our lowriders out, we’re shooting a video, all the New York rappers, come f*ck with us, ni**a—we out here! Come be a part of this video. We get down wit’ y’all.’ But Flex froze us, like, ‘Nah, y’all can’t come up.’ So we go back to the video [shoot]. We’re listening to HOT 97, ’cause that’s the sh*t—we’re from L.A., we love New York. We’re listening to HOT 97. Flex gets a call from Biggie. That ni**a Biggie goes, ‘What’s happenin’, ni**a? Red Hook [is where Tha Dogg Pound and Snoop Dogg are] shooting a video. Brooklyn, stand up!’ We don’t know what that means; we think ni**as are comin’ to show some love, like ‘Brooklyn, stand up.’ So we’re still shooting the video. Tha Dogg Pound, we’re all out in the snow in front of the bricks [and] go back to the trailer. And watch Unsolved. [Laughs]” Snoop is referring to someone shooting at the artists’ trailer.

Elliott Wilson points out that this video also featured Snoop, The Lady Of Rage, and Tha Dogg Pound kicking over buildings. “Ay, ay, ay—Biggie and them caused that,” Snoop interrupts. “And that’s all in the art of war. And because we didn’t try to f*ck him up—because we had so much love for him. Me and my team, we loved Biggie. So we took it on the chin, like, ‘F*ck.’ We didn’t even say nothin’. Like, ni**a, this my first time ever sayin’ somethin’. We acted like it didn’t happen. But the homies were hot. Death Row was hot. They were like, ‘F*ck that, f*ck that!’ They had a problem with it. It’s all in the art of war. I felt like the climate was f*cked up, and that’s what they chose to do, and that’s what cuzz (Biggie) chose to do—and nobody got hit. We was cool.”

The video shoot happened following the Source Awards and the shooting death of Death Row staffer Jake Robles. The former event, that August, was where Suge Knight had dissed Puff Daddy from the podium. Biggie would win the night’s major award, and salute his Brooklyn borough from the podium. While Snoop asked the crowd if “The East Coast got no love for Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg?” he apparently got his answer that cold fall day of 1995.

In 2013, Kurupt echoed Snoop’s point, and explained that the “New York, New York” sequence of knocking over buildings was added in response to what transpired. He told HipHopDX‘s Soren Baker, “We [originally] wanted Nas and everybody from New York to be in the video. It was a dedication to New York, but then we got shot at while we were shooting it. New York felt we were disrespecting them. [Laughs] The New Yorkers wasn’t going for it. They was like, ‘Oh, no. You ain’t gonna shoot this sh*t out here dissing us.’ They shot at us the next day, so I mean after they shot at us, we went back home and Snoop was like, ‘Man, f*ck that.’ Then we shot the other part of the video where we started kicking everything the f*ck over. That’s why we started kicking things over because we got shot at.” Notably, Tha Dogg Pound, DJ Quik, and Threat teamed for the song “NY ’87,” which dissed Biggie, Mobb Deep and others. That song remained officially unreleased until after Death Row’s 2000s bankruptcy and transfer of ownership.

After reportedly speaking on the “New York, New York” shooting for the first time publicly, Snoop details his reconciliation with Biggie. “The blessing of it all was we seen Biggie in Atlanta, with Lil’ Cease. Lil’ Cease was in the lobby. He was like, ‘Dogg, Biggie [is] upstairs.’ This is after Tupac died…I got about 100 ni**as with me downstairs. So instead of me goin’ up there and ambushing him and somethin’ crazy to him, I love this ni**a. I go upstairs; I think I take Daz [Dillinger] with me. Just me and Daz, and we go up there with Cease. Knock on the door, cuzz opens the door and he [was using] a walker. He walks [over]; we hug the ni**a…I got the do-it-fluid. I hit him off with some of this [weed]. We start smokin’. Now it’s just me and him, one-on-one. He’s giving me the rundown on how much he loved Tupac, and he didn’t want to see cuzz die. [He said] that a lot of the sh*t that he done said and did he was wrong for. He just was apologizing, like a man, to me. [We were] getting an understanding, ’cause I never tripped on him for what he did. That was a Dogg Pound video; that wasn’t a Tupac video. That was our video. We got shot at, and the direct shot came from him. But nobody got hit so we let it go. So with him apologizing to me, we became friends again.”

Snoop continues that after this ATL meeting and armistice, he visited Biggie in the studio back in New York. The LBC superstar was able to visit Daddy’s House Studios and hear Biggie’s “Somebody’s Gotta Die,” where the Brooklyn spitter notably began his song: “I’m sittin’ in the crib dreamin’ about Lear jets and coupes / The way Salt shoops and how to sell records like Snoop / Oops!” Snoop, admitting that he stayed cool with Puff Daddy throughout, says Biggie was a gracious host during recording that included DJ Premier, Easy Mo Bee, DJ Scratch, and others. “To me, this was [the] victory lap in our friendship and that we had let bygones be bygones.”

Elsewhere in the hour-plus discussion, Snoop breaks down his and The D.O.C.’s role in writing Dr. Dre’s “Nuthin’ But A ‘G’ Thang,” (27:00) says Dre only DJ’d for him one time (on The Arsenio Hall Show) (24:00), and describes his Suge Knight diss “Pimp Slapp’d” and their subsequent three-hour Las Vegas sit-down (44:00).